So things like these are more effective for me than the ones that tell you to visualise yourself as a plant with roots or whatever. These are less about grounding your personality and more about grounding your mind to reality and what’s going on around you. Bonus, the first one is directed at people with borderline personality disorder.

What I do not have is an official diagnosis. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've been looking for something that fits my symptoms for AGES. Recently I found out that what I've been calling "emotional detachment" or "backseat driving in my own head" has a name in psychiatry. (I probably ran across it in my psychology classes at some point and didn't understand it fully.) It's called dissociation.

So I started googling personality disorders with that as a symptom. I figured I was looking for a PD, because I had basically ruled out everything else that made sense. Depression and bipolar disorder didn't fit all my symptoms and most of the rest didn't even make sense.

Ran across BPD, also referred to as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. Symptoms include dissociation, inability to control your emotions, feeling like your emotions are in control of you, and as a result of the lack of control, your social interactions would suffer. Impulsivity is a big issue with people with BPD, as is something they call "splitting": basically I experience it as only seeing one side of a person at a time. I'll look at one person in particular-- who shall remain nameless-- and I'll either go "I love them and they're awesome" or I'll go "omg you've done this bad thing you're fucking evil" and I know they're not flawless, I know they're not evil, but I can't see both sides at once. It explains my anger issues, my embarrassing inability to control my reactions when I'm upset or excited or angry, my inability to decide how I feel about myself or what I want to do with my life, my anxiety issues, my occasional depressive states, my absolute terror at the thought of being alone, my pervasive boredom if I don't have something really involved to do, and my urges to self harm (though I've gotten better at managing those).

So I go see my therapist, armed with this information, and basically what happens is once she realises I won't be offended she says "yeah, I have that down as a possibility in your notes from a long time ago."

Unfortunately the insurance won't cover the diagnosis, so I don't have an official diagnosis, so much as a "yeah probably i'm pretty sure this is what you have." I'll have to figure that part out the next time I talk to my therapist, because I was already late getting out of there when she told me that.

But the immediately important part is that I have an explanation and a jumping off point for treatment.

Update: so I totally misunderstood what my therapist meant when we agreed it was an unofficial diagnosis. It is definitely what I have. We just can't tell insurance that because they will then stop covering my therapy. Because personality disorders are not caused by brain chemistry, insurance apparently thinks it's less valid and stop covering treatment. Even though therapy is literally the only effective treatment for a personality disorder. They know it'll take a while to work through and they don't wanna cover that much. Dickbags.

I feel like Tumblr has made me more paranoid about interpersonal interactions. (Newsflash: I have social anxiety. I don't need more.)

But here: I recently asked our ST (GM or DM) if it was cool that I used this one-armed character. He lost his arm, it's a thing, but he's a person (satyr) first, disabled second (or sometime after that, whenever it comes up). But I still got weird about it because I'm scared of stepping on proverbial toes.

The other thing is, half the time, I feel guilty for finding non-white people attractive-- and hear me out on this one, I promise I'm not a racist-- because according to Tumblr, if you appreciate an ethnic group aesthetically, you must be fetishising them. I know I'm not. But I still get that twinge of "oh gods I'm doing it wrong."

This is half of what's wrong with tumblr: the crazy social justice bloggers who actually ARE oversensitive.

First, it was a problem with the age of my first application. Re-submitted, problem solved.

Then it was an e-mail that I didn't get. It was re-sent, problem solved.

Then the e-mail I sent back didn't get to the right place. Gave the store a physical copy. Problem solved (I think).

Now, I was just asked to edit some stuff on the application, and when I logged on to do so, it told me I withdrew it (which I didn't) and it's no longer under consideration (which it should be) and I can't edit it D:

This is really bumming me out, guys. I was supposed to start working a week ago. And I'm getting really depressed. (I'm on a new anti-depressant, this is not helping. I can't tell if it's not working or if this is just fucking me up.)

I wanna start grooming puppies T_T

EDIT: Well, I've just found out that I'm not gonna get any answers for six fucking days. I was supposed to start a week ago, and I was really excited for this, but now I can't start for at least another week? This fucking sucks. So much for a great opportunity dropping itself into my lap. I'm starting to wonder if I'm ever going to get a job.

Had to reapply at PetCo, because the old application was months older than I thought it was. However, the groomer I talked to made it sound like the head groomer, who does the hiring for the grooming department, was really impressed with my enthusiasm. I called back in today to see if the application went through, and while it hadn't yet, the head groomer was talking like this was already a done deal.

So, I might be getting a job at PetCo as a groomer. And the head groomer I talked to said she'd call me back within a week (on Wednesday). I'm gonna stop in Monday and be persistent and excited. (And ask if there's something they'd recommend for short-haired cats, because my cat's got ear gunk and slobber all over her half the time.)

I also applied at the Potter League (an animal rescue place a town over from me), and they're currently hiring, and it's a really nice place. I was surprised.

Well, yes, mother, thank you ever so much for reminding me why I can't generalise by saying my family supports me.

You who read this at all already know that my aunt didn't support me at all, then started to, and now does in every area that does not involve her kid. I may have misunderstood that bit, but I'll get to that in a minute.What happened earlier, briefly: my little cousin asked the house at large how to spell my name. She still uses my legal name. My aunt sort of giggled, and said, "J... kidding." I said "I wish." So she suggested to my cousin that they start calling me "CJ"-- because my uncle started that, to try and wrap his head around it, and I like the idea (and it's kind of funny, to be honest)-- and my cousin started freaking out. "I don't want to call her that" and all that. Didn't make me feel particularly awesome, but that might've been the reason Auntie was holding back on the whole thing with her daughter.

Anyway.

I tell my mother this, and she tells me I'm taking it personally, she's only six, I can't honestly expect that she'd understand. I tried to explain that that wasn't the point. I obviously don't expect her to understand; we didn't explain anything, so there's nothing for her to understand.She continued to repeat those same three things, and that a name is one with the person at that age. I also know a friend of mine in first grade went by three different nicknames in as many months, and I never had a problem keeping up with it. So I asked her, "Seriously, was I not six when I was six?" And she told me that no, I was ten when I was six and gave me evidence that I was mentally almost twice my physical age. Way to take a literal question figuratively.By this point I was getting frustrated, and I told her I wasn't angry or anything, I was just disappointed. She repeated all the above crap. I just got fed up and said, "okay, look, let me show you part of the reason I'm disappointed." And I pulled out my nook. She proceeded to ignore and walk away from me, so out of frustration, I said "or not."

And then she started on me for getting pissed at her. I wasn't pissed, I was frustrated, and she wasn't listening. Oh yes, and there was beer involved. Naturally.

The child I babysit sometimes is 5 years old. Last time I went to take care of him I noticed he has this awesome painting of the moon in his bedroom. He told me his mothers friend painted it. After he told me the artists name he then explained to me “She used to be a boy but she didn’t feel good so now she just takes medicine and it helps her to be a girl. She feels better”

It’s literally that easy to explain it to kids.

And there are other precedents; there was one tumblr post I read about a child politely correcting a teacher about their uncle's gender (because the teacher, not knowing, called him "miss"). I figured, hey, I've got a really smart little cousin. If these kids that are younger than her have no problem with it, why would she?

But she has an issue with a nickname. This is why I'm disappointed. Obviously I do not hold it against her. She's six. I'm just disappointed.

On the other hand, it would help if, when I talk to my mother, she would listen to what I'm saying, not what she seems to want to hear.

She then made it worse by calling me because she "just wanted to talk", followed closely by "by the way, can you take me to Dartmouth sometime soon so I can get my glasses fixed?" This was about a week and a half ago. So I met her at Empire Tea in Newport, and we stopped at the Mad Hatter bakery right down the street before leaving. She spent the entire time talking about how she was having mental issues with certain things with the boy, which are normal, healthy parts of a relationship. I spent the entire time listening and replying with variations on "that's healthy, you're in a relationship; that's part of being in a relationship", etc.We went to Dartmouth. She got her glasses fixed. I went into FYE to browse. We went home. She continued talking about the boy. I continued not to talk much, and she didn't notice that I wasn't in a good mood.

If a middle school teacher can tell something's wrong after two minutes, a "best friend" should be able to tell after two hours.

And then she called again, a few days ago, "just [wanting] to talk" and "[needing] to see me", which was quickly followed by "by the way, do you mind picking up [the boy] from work?" I told her I had to talk to my mom about something (which I did) and told her I'd talk to her later. Mum got home kinda late-ish, and by the time I was done thinking about this bullshit, I had a headache, and I refuse to drive with a headache.

Anyway.

I found outtoday that she also tends to tell different people different stories, and I was never really getting the truth when she'd bitch to me about her boyfriend (now ex, obviously). And, as I suspected-- whether intentionally or not-- she was leading him on, just like this other creep that had a crush on her. (She refused to think that she was taking pity on him OR encouraging him when she went to a family wedding with him. As his date. So either she's clueless or she's a manipulative bitch, but I'm not ready to believe that second one.)

I'm done caring. I can't do this anymore. I don't think I care anymore that she'd be "devastated" to lose me as a friend. I can't handle her shit. She shattered my trust in her, and apparently she never trusted me as much as she said she did either. I'm done.

So yeah, now that I have no local friends to trust, I've mostly turned into a hermit because I hate going out alone if I'm going more than like four miles. I don't care about driving alone, that's fine. Hell, it's better, because that way I can sing and I don't have to worry about awkward silences if I don't.

It's if I'm going to a mall or something. Or a doctor's office, but I get nervous at doctor's offices with or without someone with me. (It just sucks a little bit less if I've got someone with me.)

But anyway, if I have to go somewhere for whatever reason, I end up getting nervous. If I get nervous, I get fidgety. Fidgety has started to translate into "scratching one specific square inch on the back of my left hand", which means I now have a red scratchy mess there, because I also do it before job interviews when I get nervous, or at school if I'm not typing notes or doing a lab.

That's a problem if I need to go do something, which happens often enough, because being home all the damn time sucks. So I go somewhere. And it only helps because I'm not home, but then it sucks because I'm in public, surrounded by people.

Bronchitis has been kicking my ass for a week and a half. My headaches are getting out of control. And my lungs hurt.

One of my friends has just stopped trying.Another has decided that "now that [I'm] Jim" I'm different. Fuck you, I never was who you thought I was, and apparently you weren't either.Another friend is moving closer to our other friends, and I might not be able to see her or make it to the RP without her.I have no other local friends.

The Effexor isn't working. The prednisone made it worse. It's still not getting better.

So okay. Had this badass dream. I was this firebender, and apparently I was good friends with the Gaang, but not a prominent friend, I guess. WAY more badass than what actually happened, IMHO.

(I wish I remembered more of the beginning; all I know is that somewhere in the middle, Toph was basically cut in half. It was basically one big badass fight scene, followed by Toph getting cut in half and some firebender creepily closing in... yeah. It didn't look good.)

I never explained that lab prof situation, either. Well, suffice it to say, my Chem lab prof is being difficult and refusing to call me James. By now, she's decided to just call me by my last name, and I'm not fond of that, but whatever, at least it's my name. I'm probably just going to cut my losses at this point.